Soggy Po' Boys hone sound for second album

Dover-based band the Soggy Po' Boys will release its second full-length album, "Perhaps it is Time to Go Home," on June 21. It's the band's first album of all-original material.

Christopher Hislop

Dover-based band the Soggy Po' Boys will release its second full-length album, "Perhaps it is Time to Go Home," on June 21. It's the band's first album of all-original material.

The New Orleans-influenced, brass-fueled band is coming off its first tour — a nine date jaunt down the East Coast, complete with gig-related busking sessions during the day.

The Po' Boys' music is arguably the most fun you can get out of an eight-man band.

Case in point: The development the group has showcased from its debut, "Seedy Business," to the latest effort. The band transcends geographic bounds, and is constantly challenging the way one might hear New Orleans-style tunes.

On some level it's creating its own blended brand of music, but New Orleans forever remains a piece of the group's formative development after a field trip to The Big Easy became the cement that sealed the obvious course of action the band was pursuing.

The band has since become more a "thing" than the jam-based entity it was when the group started at the original Barley Pub during Mardi Gras 2012.

"(Mike) Effenberger started the group," lead vocalist and guitarist Stu Dias says. " We played that night until 11 and packed up because we thought the gig was over. We had played everything we planned on playing. Scott (Mason, former Barley Pub owner) said, 'You guys can't stop now.' But we packed up the B3, and weren't about to unpack it again, so we sat around the old piano at the pub and just kept going with it — inviting people up to sing songs, or kick in with their instruments. That lasted until about 3 in the morning ...; From there, it turned into a regular Tuesday night gig."

A gig that continues to this day, at Sonny's Tavern — same location, different name.

"Tuesdays are an excuse to hang out with our friends, eat, drink, and play tunes," Dias says. "It's like a church I would want to be a part of. There's no ambitions of grandeur, or delusions of it. We know this music isn't something you'll hear on everyday radio. And that's weirdly freeing. We can just do whatever we want. That's the ultimate victory. That sentiment has opened up a lot of compositional doors for us."

Unlike some of the other weekly genre-fueled residencies that take place, the Po' Boys' performances began to become more and more dynamic.

"It became clear that people came to see us, not to have background music going on, but to literally see us, hear us," Dias says. "We weren't the soundtrack, we were the thing. We never thought there'd be a demand for this music. It turns out there's a relatively decent audience that is looking for it, or are engaged if they happened to fall into it merely by accident."

And so came "Seedy Business," a record solidifying the Soggy Po' Boys as a band.

And now, further along in the progression, "Perhaps it is Time ...; " showcases the songwriting talents of the group instead of a single person being credited for writing the band's tunes.

Divided almost perfectly between joy and darkness, the recording seems to irresistibly celebrate life and the inevitability of death simultaneously.

That's a very New Orleanian way of thinking, Dias says.

But there's more. Oh yes, there's more.

"There's so much more to New Orleans music that I hadn't even considered," Dias says while reflecting on the band's trip to the city to soak up the culture as a unit. "There's a perception that New Orleans is a closed circuit. People have the sense that music left there but never came in after 1930. I think people have this perception that the music that was created and established in the early part of the 20th century is the music that is music that they still play exclusively in New Orleans right now. I find that couldn't be further from the truth. A really good example is how popular Fats Waller's music is down there. Almost all of that music was written in Harlem. People in New Orleans listen to stuff that is happening around the country. They get hip to it, and they make it swing."

Which is precisely what the band is looking to make their audience do, no matter where the gig is going down. Swing.

"I want the music to have as much variation as possible," Dias says. "People often ignore the Caribbean influences on New Orleans music. I'm fascinated by it. It's so joyful, so magical. I want to shed more light on that influence. There are three tunes on the new record that have ultra Caribbean influence drawn in. That was a blatant thing. We're celebrating that sound.

"Our tunes are centered around the idea that we don't have to be from New Orleans; we don't have to have lived through the Depression to make this kind of music. We're about being from here. A lot of bands claim they are from somewhere other than where they're actually located to lend authenticity to their art. There's a geographic shift to make that music somehow seem more credible. We don't care about any of that. We've never claimed to be from anywhere but Dover, New Hampshire. ... This is music we believe in, and it has a place to live regardless of where it was born."

Trumpet player Zach Lange adds, "The music of New Orleans gave way to a broader American voice. The music is still thriving and preserved in New Orleans, and comes out of people's backbones. This music, above all others, makes me smile, dance, and be present in the moment. That is the feeling I have when I'm walking the streets of the French Quarter. I think people respond so well to this music in New England because they didn't even know they were suffering from the deficiency. We're happy to be presenting them with the prescription to combat that. I think 'Perhaps it is Time to Go Home' has signaled that the Po' Boys are starting to find a unique voice in a style whose tradition goes back more than a century."

The album has an old-time feel to it. Back to a time when people looked to music as their primary form of entertainment. Back when music felt good, and people gathered in mass to share in the feel-good vibe.

In contemporary times, when music is predominantly recorded digitally, the Soggy Po' Boys have turned back the clock, using ribbon microphones and mastering the record to tape. There are no overdubs, there's no use of digital processing, leaving the listener with an organic, warm, feel-good vibe.

"The most exciting part is that now we have a record that really shows people who we are and what we sound like," sousaphone player Claude Fried says. "The fact that it's only original music was never an intention, but now that it's completed and we can look back on it, it seems so perfect."

Fried adds that anyone going to see the Po' Boys for the first time on Saturday "can expect an experience that's totally unique in this area — an experience that has been renowned for paying homage to a culture in New Orleans."

The group has been anxious to release the album since leaving the recording studio, he says. "We were so excited recording it, we were so excited it was all original music, and we were so excited just how it was coming out. The show at Fury's is going to be a high-energy affair that oozes our own excitement, not only about releasing an album but opening a new chapter in the band's life. After we recorded the first album, I think we realized what the band could become and we started making it happen. The new album is a culmination of that."

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